Oi folks, see what I did yesterday:

• 500 g squid (illex spp.)
• scallions
• soba (buckwheat noodles)
• green thai curry sauce (I was lazy, yeah)
• spices etc.

Noodles boil 5 minutes, cold rinse 2 times after that.

Slice the squid how you want it. Really slowly heat the pieces in a pan until that milky fluid comes out.

Slice the scallions, add some olive oil, vinegar, nanami togarashi, salt, lemon juice.

Pour that over the squid, quickly heat it all. The longer that takes, the more liquid you’ll have (which may not be good, as the squid gets more and more chewy).

Add the sauce, add the noodles.

Voilà.

In cooking, there are two general elements: plan and action. Preparing good food implies a huge amount of knowledge about ingredients, tools, techniques, chemistry, physics. However, lots of (subtle) differences in resulting quality lie in the process of cooking itself. This can only be learned through experience. Often, there is no time to take another look at the recipe. Furthermore, it won’t help if the temperature is already slightly too high etc.

Minimal Improv Cooking is a way of facing this performative impasse: how can I develop my activity without already knowing everything theoretically? The principles are as follows:

• The decision about ingredients is taken intuitively. Experience provides enough knowledge about what could go well with what else. Get what you want to combine, experiment with that, and your ability will develop in the actual process.
• A complex result does not need a complex recipe. The aspect of minimality is beneficient for the preparation. If the recipe is too complex, I cannot concentrate on what I do and cannot learn from it. However, this does not imply using common, easy or familiar ingredients. I get fantastic results preparing food I’ve never eaten before.
• Look up some possibilities of preparation. Just get a vague impression – as a timing can depend on temperature, of what use is an exact time without the neccessary exact temperature? Decide which way to go, memorise the technique just roughly.
• Use your own activity for acquiring additional ability. Observe what actually happens, do not think about the result, but about the preparational process. Myself, I nearly never check the taste before serving.
• Surely, lots of things can go wrong. However, there will be no need to worry whether the recipe was!